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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543906">YELLOW</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughish/pseuds/laughish'>laughish</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A3! (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, homare arisugawa character assassination time babey !!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:02:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,589</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25543906</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughish/pseuds/laughish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>a songfic regarding homare arisugawa basically</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>YELLOW</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <strong>In other words I was trapped in curiosity<br/>
Breaking through anything precious<br/>
A whole cake with no radiance<br/>
I was dancing with a wooden puppet of you</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      Homare wasn't quite sure if he had always been like this, or if  it was some inadequacy of his that had developed somehow like a  cancerous tumor. It was a hindrance to his personality, it made him feel  so incomprehensibly alienated, and also caused him to alienate others  without meaning to. He sometimes found himself wishing that he had  discovered some other art, anything that may have lead him to become  someone different. A zeal for life inspired him, but his inability to  properly care for the lives surrounding him left him sitting at a desk  writing outlandish rhymes.</p>
<p>       It was silly. He knew it may  be a slight issue, but it exploded in his face so suddenly with his  previous romantic partner. Romance was... Something else. It was a spice  to life, and a relationship was a labour of love. So why had his  partner cried so much during their time with him? On worse nights, he  recited the conversations he had with them and tried to pin what things  he had done wrong. Tsumugi's words echoed in his head sometimes.</p>
<p>       'I know you mean well, but sometimes there's a line you just don't cross.'</p>
<p>
<em><strong>Once again, in the closet<br/>
Huddling our small bodies inside<br/>
We'll sleep, we'll change<br/>
It's safer to think that way</strong></em>
</p>
<p>      Homare had lived an entire twenty-seven years observing others.  It wasn't something he would call a guilty habit. He couldn't find  anything wrong with people-watching. It was simple, impassive, and he  got to see life continuing on right before him without him setting  anything off. In all of those twenty-seven years, a slow realisation  crept up on him. It was cold and lonely, icy tendrils that infiltrated  through all physical barriers and wrapped around his very soul. The  things he saw were irreplaceable memories, commonplace and fleeting, but  never the same. The joy he felt from seeing a child blowing a dandelion  at the park, the tenderness in his chest when he witnessed an old  couple feeding pigeons, the determined energy he traced off of people  who jogged at the edge of grass that was barely dried of morning dew, it  was all going to fade away and never be acknowledged again. Maybe  they'd be reclaimed in deep dreams, but that had to be a rare  occurrence. </p>
<p>       So he began to journal, filling pages up  with the wonderful things he saw in scratchy handwriting by junior high.  All of those disorganised thoughts began to refine themselves into  flowing lilts in his mind by the time he was in high school, and his  handwriting became easier on the eyes and on the wrist from frequency  and practise. He people-watched when he could, finding a routine spot to  sit and view the sights without thinking much to actually interact with  the world stretching in front of him. </p>
<p>       It was the first  day of third year when he found a girl sitting where he normally sat  during lunch. He had quietly sat next to her and made no statements when  a small group of girls joined her and they all began to talk. He wrote  in his journal quietly, a small poem about a flock of birds that  gathered to relay messages that were decreed late at night. </p>
<p>        "Hey, you there." a slightly rough voice called to him and one of the  girls leveled him with a mild glare. "What are you writing in that  diary of yours? Nothing weird, right?" she challenged. Homare blinked at  her a few times and then grinned broadly, sliding his notebook into the  crowd of curious underclassmen with a hint of pride. He watched the  girls scan it with interest, sharing looks with each other that he  couldn't quite place. The girl who questioned him slid the notebook back  to him and eyed him dubiously. "Man, what the hell is that stuff? Are  you in lala land?" she scoffed a little. An unfamiliar feeling had hit  Homare at that moment, one that he would later come to describe as  humiliation. </p>
<p>       "That's too harsh!" the girl who had  originally sat at the table gasped, returning Homare's notebook quickly.  Like a lagging robot, Homare took a few seconds to actually grab it. He  was stunned by one of his first in depth social interactions. "I think  your writing's really interesting." she tacked on. He wasn't sure if she  was trying to be nice, or if it was a sincere compliment with  unfortunate timing. He grabbed his notebook, bowed to the group of  girls, and left.</p>
<p>       For the rest of the year, he spent lunch  bouncing around locations to people-watch, but he didn't go to that  same bench again. He could still remember it perfectly years after he  graduated though. It was a fond setting he sewed together in fragments  to send himself off into sleep. Sometimes he'd jolt awake at the faint  muttering of a gruff female voice, but it wasn't so hard to return to  sleep after that. </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strong>"Don't abandon me, for I'm just a foolish child"<br/>
Awaken your naive eyes before my muddled identity<br/>
All the toys were put away last night<br/>
I still want to stay as innocent as ever...</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      Homare's small taste of companionship from that one underclassman  had him intrigued. It wrapped a string around his heart that tugged him  towards more interactions until he had found that people-watching  turned into true socialisation. He wrote a lot less at school. It should  have bothered him that it took until his last year of his school youth  to actually seriously partake in social events, but he still felt that  people-watching was never a waste. He learned about others through that,  after all. Now he was just taking a more hands on approach.</p>
<p>       Learning people  though; it wasn't something that split between learning types where you  could find the one you were best at and capitalise on it. Homare had  originally thought that the gateway to people and their souls was  philosophy, a careful exposing of the human condition that so many could  drone on about for hours, but people had a tendency to turn their nose  up at it and call him just a little bit pretentious when he brought it  up to spark conversations. It wasn't that Homare hated it, but mundane  conversation felt like pulling teeth for him. Hearing it and listening  had brought him a bit of joy when it was two other people, but the magic  was sucked out as soon as he tried. </p>
<p>       "Good morning,  Akito. How are you today?" Homare cast another line out into the sea of  people and waited for a tug. The boy in question looked up with defeated  slumping shoulders and dark circles under his eyes. </p>
<p>        "I'm alright." Akito said halfheartedly. Homare could see the lie from a  mile away. He wanted to help, to see order restored to that little  slice of life in front of him. </p>
<p>       "You don't look alright.  Your girlfriend broke up with you, so of course you'd be upset since she  did it at a festival." Homare pointed out. Akito's shoulders tensed at  Homare's words. "You have the right to be upset. We can talk about it,  if it makes you feel any better."</p>
<p>       "Leave me alone,  Arisugawa." Akito requested quietly. His eyes narrowed and his face  soured even further like a sheet of paper being scrunched up after water  spilled over it. The distant use of last names made Homare pull back  and disengage. He knew he messed up. It wasn't the first time, but it  always felt awful. After some bad encounters, he had learned to relent  when people said something. </p>
<p>       "Have a good day, Akito."  Homare excused himself quietly, turning his face towards the front of  the room to wait for homeroom to begin. Akito didn't talk to Homare much  after that, cold and curt and always itching to start a conversation  with anyone else in the mornings. Homare found himself wishing that he  could have just stayed in his little box on the map, people-watching  forever without consequence. </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strong>Affections are just 'high' to throw away<br/>
Skinning away that precious memory<br/>
But if you regret this 'low-life'<br/>
Shall a summer with a hopeless wish come</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      Love was a sacred thing to Homare, even if it was something that  he wanted to give out freely and without restraint. It was an infinite  resource meant to be tapped into to enrich the lives of everyone. That  why he felt so betrayed by society when he found out that the people who  buzzed like bees around him hadn't acknowledged its sanctity. Betrayed  was a harsh word. It wasn't quite that he had felt betrayed; he never  asked for anything in the first place. He was disappointed by how  trivial love had become in a modern setting. There was no longer the  grand exclamations, unashamed and passionate, or the gentleness of  courtship. Love itself had become one of those things that fell away  from the extremities of aesthetics. Homare was infinitely disappointed  in those sorts of things. The world had become less aesthetic about the  things that mattered and the childlike wonder that Homare got from  people-watching fell away quickly when he became an adult going to bars  to see what happened. </p>
<p>       So he developed a new intense love  for pragmatism. A new world for him to be inspired and moved by the  world around him. How compact paint bottles became! How economic  apartments were! How sleek and streamlined vehicles got! </p>
<p>        But he missed the sight of people ducking their top halves under the  hoods of cars when it wouldn't start. He missed the charm of a bulky  disconnected refrigerator. He missed the ugliness of old paint bottles,  tin caps crusted shut from a person's earlier artistic ventures. He  missed aestheticism. A part of him screamed at him to continue being a  romantic about life, but it was so much effort to put into such a  wishy-washy world that used extremes for mundane and useless things. </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strong>It seems like he was killed by curiosity<br/>
Testing it with sly means<br/>
Nothing will raise from such independence,<br/>
I sang with a wholehearted smile</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      Had he learned the art of compromise and nuance, Homare would  have been fine when he entered his first relationship. It wasn't so  dispassionate, but he had mostly done it out of curiosity without  realising how strongly his partner felt about it. If he had watched  himself from a third person view at the same time that he was engaging  with the relationship, he would have felt the same bitter disappointment  of the pure despondence of love on his side. He had come to love them,  of course. There was no question about that. He had loved them, but  there was a ravine between them that he always failed to cross. Whenever  certain things came up, he hopped onto the tightrope in an attempt to  make it to their side, but every time he would become stuck. As a  result, his partner would try to meet him halfway, but they always  suffered and lost their balance before they could help him. </p>
<p>        Was it his fault? He had trouble figuring out what he did wrong to  cause them to hurt so much. He was hardly ever angry or resentful of  them. He couldn't imagine snapping at them or raising voice or hand to  them. They were younger than him, but something made them much wiser and  they became the leader of the relationship until they just... Stopped.  Perhaps it was because they were so tired of falling into the deep dark  ravine so many times. Homare couldn't blame them for being tired. All of  his efforts to find a different approach were always wrong.</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strong>Once again, in the closet<br/>
Waiting alone is always like this it'll change, it'll end, it's confirmed<br/>
Continue to seek that worth, worth, worth</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      Without anyone at the wheel of the relationship, it very quickly  swerved off of the road and crashed in a blazing fire. Homare watched it  veer sharply, but he didn't find any courage within himself to reach  out and redirect it, to save it. His partner had sad obsolete and empty,  curled up like a hurt animal in the driver's seat. </p>
<p>       A  relationship was a huge investment, but Homare had been unlucky enough  to find within his first one that sometimes all that hard work lead to  nowhere. The resentment bubbled over eventually, but Homare couldn't say  it wasn't deserved. After making his partner cry so much, after burning  out the light of passion that they had tried to extend to him, he could  only listen to their words and seriously reconsider himself as a human  being. </p>
<p>       By the time it had all come to pass, Homare found  himself alone again. Looking at his notebook filled with strange  musings, he was terrified to find that all of his words sounded shallow.  Any poems dedicated to his partner were so abstract that he couldn't  help but wonder if they had smiled and thanked him for them out of pity.  He knew love. He knew it from seeing it everywhere, but he had  failed to execute it. He didn't know what the problem was called until  it was pointed out to him directly by a bartender once. It was an issue  of emotional maturity. Emotional intelligence. He had failed to grasp  that in his formative years, and drifted so much that he was so terribly  ill equipped by adulthood that he could see things exactly as they were  and still manage to do the exact wrong thing. </p>
<p>       Homare  became a pragmatist in his poetry after that. The different approach  lead to a surreal style that fans ate up, but he sometimes worried about  the state of mind of his fans if they accepted what he wrote without  question. </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strong>As the second hand approaches<br/>
Roll it up till it's deep<br/>
Eventually, both Heaven and Earth goes upside down<br/>
Why? How come? See it got all blurred and transparent<br/>
"I still remember that scenery I saw out the window"<br/>
The 'yellow' that is better off to disappear</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      It wasn't quite a renunciation of romance itself. Homare was not a  bitter man who would dwell on such things. He still wholeheartedly  believed in love and romance, but hearing the rest of the Winter Troupe  discussing their love lives hit him with a certain tugging again. It  bordered between that slight disappointment, but there was something  else too. In hearing about the love lives of everyone around him, he had  to wonder how it felt for them. Save Azuma, the descriptions had been  fairly vague. Homare admired how calmly Tsumugi talked about breaking it  off with his previous girlfriend just for acting. </p>
<p>       The  weight of different sorts of love was another thing Homare couldn't  fathom. He didn't understand the point of rejecting one sort of love for  another because love was such an infinite source that he couldn't  imagine having to turn any one type down. The conversation fell around  him like comforting raindrops on a window until he was asked about his  own love life. The memories of it flashed by him, blurring past with  only a fragment of the emotions he had felt at the time. The camera roll  violently turned and turned on different scenes, only offering him a  glimpse, until he was looking his old partner in the eye again as they  told him of all of his shortcomings. </p>
<p>       "I have nothing to discuss." Homare dug in his heels at the prospect of having to divulge any of his love life. </p>
<p>        "No romantic experience?" Tasuku prodded, not quite processing  that Homare was avoiding eye contact. It was hard to believe, given that  Homare was nearly thirty years old. </p>
<p>       "No type?" Tsumugi added with an encouraging smile. </p>
<p>       "Nothing." Homare confirmed, frowning sternly. </p>
<p>       "Really? No romantic opinions either?" Izumi asked, a little bit pleading really. </p>
<p>        "Nothing at all." as the speculation continued around him,  without his input, he focused on trying to redirect the conversation  away from such an ugly memory. He had broken through with a sudden poem,  an empty poem that he had written in his youth when he had the dream of  having a partner at all. The heavily romanticised words struck hollow  and bounced off of the image of his previous lover like gravel on a car  wheel. It was so superficial that he felt bad to think he may have  subjected someone to such juvenile idealism. </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <strong>You've purposely mistaken that; that day will not arrive<br/>
Collapsed, divergence and disengagement<br/>
There's no salvation within your reach<br/>
Yet still, I recall your warmth...</strong>
  </em>
</p>
<p>      At first, he had taken no interest in another new face who had  dropped into the Mankai Company. There was nothing special about them and their affiliations at first, but then they started to speak. Speak about themselves, speak about the others, they just spoke about life. They had  such an enthralling voice when they talked of normal everyday occurences that he felt like he was reading a long  lost letter that never made it to its intended destination. He was quite  clear about that fact as well, as soon as they had walked through the  door and identified themselves. Homare had lost his belief in most  superstition and idioms, but his heart was subtly set alight. </p>
<p>        He didn't even realise it was happening until it was completely on  fire. The flame had licked at its base and then slowly engulfed and  seared it. There was a sudden passion and love that he had forgotten  existed within him. It was different from his inspired moments from  life, something that tugged at his ribcage and tangled it until it could  constrict it at will. Inspiration would pick at his brain until he put  it down on paper, and he did feel some upon becoming better acquainted  with them. By the time he had written a poem dedicated to them as a gift  for becoming his friend, he remembered very suddenly those feelings. </p>
<p>        What he felt had slipped between pragmatism and aestheticism, but  he jumped down into the gutters of that place along with the rest of  those proclaimed 'plebeians' just to grab it again. It was a dark and  confusing swarm and he felt like he was drowning in molasses, a sea bird  caught in an oil spill. He tried to imagine it, a romantic future with them, and his hand tingled at the thought of intertwining fingers. A  ghost of a touch had latched on and dragged him back to land before he  could completely drown, but he exited that place feeling heavy and  weighed down. </p>
<p>
<strong><em>Affections are just 'high' to throw away</em><br/>
Skinning away that precious memory<br/>
But if you regret this 'low-life'<br/>
Shall a summer with a hopeless wish come
  </strong>
</p>
<p>      Who was Homare to compete? He hardly competed for anything in his  life. He never competed in the publishing industry. He had rolled with  the initial punches and suddenly found himself with a following without much  effort. Of course, it was a far cry from Banri's effortless life, but it  was still considerable when he had realised that it seemed that the arrival, his new friend and flame, had him  completely beat out in the books of love and its vastness. They weren't particularly open about it, but Homare was good at discerning  people's emotions. He was almost as good as Azuma. </p>
<p>       But  he was worse than everyone else at doing anything about it. It was not  for lack of trying, but because he had never managed to find that  emotional intelligence that was so essential to forming functioning  relationships. Even now, he was still maturing with the help of the  Mankai Company. Slowly but surely, he was starting to pick things up  without having to use that Loupe as a crutch, but... Everyone else was  always leaps and bounds ahead of him, especially outside of the Winter  Troupe where mere children had solved deep issues within days. Homare  wasn't an envious man. He stayed in his lane most of the time, and so he  could accept that easily.</p>
<p>       What he couldn't accept was  the possibility of repeating the same mistakes with someone else. The newcomer had dispensed love like an infinite fountain, but it seemed that  his previous partner could do that too. What if he snuffed that flame  too? What if he hadn't learned a single thing after all this time? His  bonds in the Mankai Company had grown stronger, but romance was a  different level of emotional awareness that Homare hadn't dipped his  feet into since the fall of  his previous relationship. </p>
<p>        That's why he had quickly sidelined himself, giving the rest of the men  wide berth and only interacting with them as if they were anyone else.  Because if he treated them differently, wouldn't that just inevitably  lead to the same kind of memories? Homare had felt upset at the world's  inability to devote romance to any extremes, but he had learned the hard  way that doing so was harmful. </p>
<p>       So he stood back and  resolved to grow as much as he could. If they had left by the time he  was ready, then it would be another regret to add onto his romantic  life. But it was better, he felt, if things ended that way. There was a  once touched upon path that lead to a much more painful alternative.</p>
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